Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

? At the start of the war, the A-10s were used in the role for which they were designed, attacking enemy armor in close proximity to friendly forces. Warthog pilots described the first day of the war as a “turkey shoot.” Because Sandy Sharpe and Dave Sawyer, the A-10 wing commanders, kept their aircraft above 10,000 feet, they were able to inflict great violence on front-line Iraqi divisions without unnecessarily exposing the aircraft to enemy defenses (though two aircraft were hit by small-arms fire, the damage was negligible).

The picture got complicated after the opening days of the war, when bad weather over the KTO gave the Iraqis time to dig in deeper.

By the time the weather cleared, later in January, the Iraqis had gone to ground and the impact on them of the high-flying A-10s was far less devastating than before. Consequently, on the thirty-first of January, it was decided that the Warthogs could initiate their attacks from 4,000 to 7,000 feet. In that way, the pilots would be closer to their targets and could more easily spot the dug-in and camouflaged tanks, APCs, and artillery pieces. It also put the aircraft closer to the Iraqis, so they could more accurately aim their guns and heat-seeking missiles.

Despite the increased risk, the A-10s were getting the job done very well, and this encouraged their commanders to task them against other targets, such as SAM sites, fixed structures, and logistical storage areas. The commanders in the TACC, and even at the wing, did not realize that they were all in the process of “mission creep.” As a result, they were putting this aircraft and their pilots in needless jeopardy.

For a time, everything went along just fine. The lower altitude allowed the A-10 pilots to find their targets more easily than before, and the tank kills rose. Meanwhile, the defensive threat seemed pretty much unchanged, as the pilots followed the daily directives Sandy Sharpe and Dave Sawyer gave them both verbally and in the pilots’ “Read File.” Then came A-10 successes hunting Scuds in Iraq and as a “Wart Weasel,” and mission creep went into high gear.

Soon, TACC commanders were sending A-10s against targets deep in the KTO, and the command element aboard the ABCCC EC-130 began to divert the A-10s deeper and deeper into Kuwait and Iraq.

Though the A-10 pilots questioned this ever-increasing tasking of the A-10 deeper into harm’s way, headquarters ignored their fears (though the two wing commanders did manage to work with the Black Hole and choke off the truly insane mission creep jobs, such as a proposal to bomb an SA-2 storage site near Basra).

Now that A-10s were flying deep behind the lines, battle damage to the aircraft began to mount, and some serious hits were tearing off major portions of the aircraft structure. The pilots were attacking the Tawalkana and Medina divisions of the Republican Guard at 4,000 feet above the ground and sixty to seventy miles north of the border and safety. On the fifteenth of February, the Republican Guard stopped taking it lying down and launched eight SAMs, which knocked down two aircraft and extensively damaged Dave Sawyer’s jet.

Sawyer climbed out over the hostile desert at a sizzling 200 knots, with thousands of holes in his engines and tail, and the top of his right empennage blown off. Just as he crossed the last Iraqis, some fifteen miles north of the border and safety, he looked down to see a flight of faster F-16s working over a huddled third-string Iraqi infantry division that Saddam had staked out to absorb our ground offensive’s first blow. A lonely moment. Also an angry one. Somebody had badly screwed up priorities.

We had a problem. Our most effective tank killer was being shot up at an alarming rate. In fact, before February 15, we had lost only one A-10 (on February 2 to an IR SAM), while suffering a little over twenty-five other aircraft shot down. Still, before February 15, the large number of battle-damaged A-10s was wearing on my mind. Thirty or forty had been hit, yet had survived and limped home for repairs — a tribute to their rugged design and safety features. But a lot of hits was a lot of hits. Too many hits.

On the fifteenth, when I walked into the TACC, I learned that two A-10s were down and three damaged, with one of these losing much of its tail. The airplanes were too valuable in a variety of roles, from Scud-hunting to close air support, to have them grounded by battle damage. There was a strong possibility that the Iraqis would run me out of airplanes before they ran out of SAMs.

With a heavy heart, I told the battle staff we were going to pull the A-10s back and use them only against the Iraqi divisions near the border. The Republican Guard and other armored divisions being held in reserve would now be off-limits to the A-10s, until later in the war, when the Iraqis had run out of heat-seeking missiles. Though I was worried that my decision would sting the egos of the Warthog drivers (a fate they sure didn’t deserve, since they were excelling at everything they’d been tasked to do), I just couldn’t stand by and watch them take hits and now losses.

But Dave Sawyer wrote me the next day, the sixteenth, and (without really meaning to) relieved my worries. “Your guidance to limit A-10s to southern areas is appropriate and timely,” he wrote. (That’s military for “Thank you, boss. We were being given more than our share of pain and suffering.”) He went on to relate the specific procedures he and Sandy Sharpe had worked out:

“We have prohibited daytime strafe for the present, except in true close air support, search and rescue, or troops in contact situations. With the OA-10 forward air control spotters, flight leads using binoculars, or a high (relative) speed recce pass in the 4–7,000 foot range, we should be able to determine worthwhile armor targets, then stand off and kill them with Mavericks. We’ll save the gun (and our aircraft) for the ground offensive. The OA-10s and our two night A-10 squadrons have yet to receive battle damage. There’s safety in altitude and darkness. When the ground war starts, we’ ll strafe up a storm and get in as close as we need to to get the job done. No A-10 pilot should ever have to buy a drink at any Army bar in the future. Until G day, request you task A- 10s only in air interdiction kill boxes you’ve now limited us to. If you need us to go to deeper AI targets, we plan to impose a 10,000-foot above-the-ground minimum altitude there, and employ only free-fall ordnance and Mavericks. We’ll promptly exit any AI area in which we get an IR or radar SAM launch.”

It wasn’t a case of the A-10s failing to do the job, it was rather a matter of building on the strengths of our overall force. We would use the strengths of the F-16s, with their speed and automated bombing systems, to attack the heavily defended divisions deep in the KTO, while the more capable close-in capabilities of the A-10’s 30mm cannon would be reserved for the more heavily dug-in, but more lightly defended, Iraqis just across the Saudi border.

Later — after the results of the war were compiled — the superior survivability of the Warthogs was amply demonstrated. Of the U.S. aircraft tasked to carry the mail against the Iraqi Army, only the F-16s and USMC F/A-18s exceeded the A-10s in fewest losses per 1,000 sorties.

There is a story about a young fighter pilot who walks into a saloon in some faraway place and sits down at a table with a tough old veteran, deep in thought and drink.

“What is the secret to life and success in flying fighters?” the youngster asks the old hero.

And the steely-eyed, well-worn fighter pilot sings out, “More whiskey, more women, and faster airplanes.”

Well, in this war the Warthogs had a lot of success, but they sure didn’t have much whiskey, women, or a fast airplane; they did it with brains and courage.

APPROACHING G DAY

Since the Schwarzkopf plan for the ground offensive involved a massive, surprise flanking attack (which was to be anchored by a direct assault into Kuwait), the ground forces slated for the flanking attack had to secretly relocate to assembly areas west of their original positions. The secrecy was crucial to the plan, and the CINC had been adamant about maintaining it. As we have already seen, he had refused to let the Army start its movements until the air war started, lest the Iraqi Air Force discover his preparation for the “end run” of their defenses.

For Gary Luck’s XVIIIth Airborne Corps, this directive proved to be a big problem, for they had the farthest to go — over 400 miles, with nearly 15,000 troops and their equipment — at the same time that Fred Franks’s VIIth Corps was making its own way west over the same, two-lane Tapline Road. Despite the obstacles, Luck and his two heavy division commanders, Major Generals McCaffery and Peay, worked out how to make this difficult movement.

Luck had one serious advantage over Franks’s heavily armored corps, in that his own corps was more easily